Thomas Friedman, you pitiful fool, cont’d

Thomas Friedman, apparently trying to top his many previous attempts to convincingly demonstrate coherence is just beyond his grasp, opens his column today thusly[.]

Hemingway quotes Friedman:

The Associated Press reported last week that Fidel Castro, the former president of Cuba, wrote an opinion piece on a Cuban Web site, following a Republican Party presidential candidates’ debate in Florida, in which he argued that the “selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.

When Marxists are complaining that your party’s candidates are disconnected from today’s global realities, it’s generally not a good sign.

Hemingway comments:

Alas, Friedman has a special talent for complaining about a “competition of idiocy and ignorance” in such a way that it appears he’s the one winning the race. I’d could say more, but moments like this are Mark Steyn’s raison d’être[.]

Aside from the minor detail that Marxists have been complaining about the disconnect between pro-market political parties and “global reality” since the original Marxist sat in the Reading Room of the British Library riffing on the internal contradictions of capitalism, I was struck by Mr Friedman’s sparkling way with words. I’m not a credentialed Professor of Prose Style at Columbia School of Journalism or anything, but, for the “it’s generally not a good sign”/”you know you’ve got a problem” cliche to work, doesn’t the bit before it have to be something unexpected or unwanted? “When Fidel Castro’s hailing the GOP platform as just the ticket, it’s generally not a good sign.” That sort of thing.

Instead, Friedman goes on to peddle his usual globalist soft-core erotica, none of which Castro would support and none of which his enslaved people have any access to.

Steyn concludes with an exercise in Friedmanesque logic: “Oh, well. When right-wing loons are complaining that your opening paragraph is entirely disconnected from the rest of the column, presumably Thomas L Friedman takes that as a good sign.”